Takes two to Dento

Sitting at Dento on Folsom Street with Katya.

Just spent an hour swapping over from ███.com to aprillittrell.com. It was a redirect, now it’s direct.

Notice the fingerprints on the iPad screen. A past me would have suffered without them buffed out immediately. Today’s me doesn’t mind as much. She actually kinda likes them there. Same with the occasional scratch or dent.

Katya got me a flawless notebook from Community Thrift yesterday. It’s called Moon Lists, Volume 2. I’ll share the first entry later when I have a chance to scan it.

We’re hoping to go to Yosemite for the first time this coming week. Logistics look like hell—who knew a walk in the park would be so complicated? It’s not so bad, but I’d rather just hop in a rental and watch the scenery unfold than think through which is the best place to stay, where to get food, when to wake up to beat the crowd, which are the best trails… it’s just a bit overwhelming. It can be difficult to accept a trip for what it turns out to be rather than trying to finesse every detail. There’s something about getting your time and money’s worth, but that starts to get overshadowed by the stress of planning. I’m trying too hard to relax. Or to optimize my impending relaxation. Fuck optimization.

Here’s my cat¹ post-spelunk into a cup of yogurt.

I meant to write about something else but I completely forgot what that something was to be. I should take better notes.

As I say to my fuzzy son (pictured above), see you villian.

Every bit of air

Last weekend, at Whittaker’s Bunkhouse in Ashford, Washington, I was packing my Deuter Aircontact Lite when I learned I’d been packing all wrong. Francisco, who was to be one of three on my rope team for Rainier, yanked out my neatly squared-away gear, unfurled it, and began shoving it back into the nylon abyss. The result: newfound space from the same assortment of objects, sorted differently.

I unlocked a potent metaphor in that moment. Sometimes all the folding, rolling, kneading, sealing, stacking, zipping, clicking, and cynching is for naught. The most efficient way to pack a backpack is to shove shit in, taking up every available nook. I was dumbfounded.

Tonight I rediscovered my own website and blew off some thick digital dust. Haven’t set foot in here for months. I was on a streak for a while of uploading old school essays that would have otherwise sat on a drive somewhere until the day I died. Thought it’d be neat to backdate them and see my authorial voice evolve over time. Turn a cringe-fest into a teaching moment with a side of humility.¹

Some of the old uploads I’d added footnotes to with Wikipedia linkouts for context. The essay I uploaded tonight,² however, seemed ripe for some direct hyperlinkage, so I started linking inline instead of burying sources at the bottom. I then realized I may have initially gone with footnotes to not interrupt reading flow—you might otherwise get easily sidetracked, tripping down a tab-based rabbit hole with a cat’s curiosity and a happy clicker-finger.

I then realized that what’s most important is getting up the mountain while conserving as much energy as possible so you can get back down,³ or being maximally efficient and minimally organized—or being organized in an unituitive way. Shoving it in. And so, against my better judgement, I must favor filling all possible air space of this internet enclave lest I end up with something beautifully organized and woefully void of substance.

Yet another post about posting to avoid actually having to post. The mind of a writer is the mind of us all. It’s 1:30am when I set the dehumidifier to go off (same as turn on in English), assuming I’d be asleep by now and it wouldn’t hinder my getting to sleep. Just scared the daylights out of me. And now that the daylights have vacated, it is time to vacate the land of the lucid for some progesterone-fueled dreamscape. Away.

Mirror

A mirror with fixtures fixed askew
invites accidental self-admiration
or abominable trips into the abyss.
One’s own passerby, a single self
certain to question the singularity of
their soul upon a small sip of reflection.
When consciousness whets the tongue
twas dry from the hydrating licks
of internal love, mealy feelings
gyrate and tumble quips of sparkly
personal acknowledgment like soft
sand into glass into sequins into
surprisingly sultry patterns of shimmers
one wears on the skin like a
lacquer of bravery in the ability
to conquer a customized you.